One More Day
by Coco Gash Jirachi
Summary: The desert. It can be an enemy, but sometimes an enemy isn't what it seems to be. [Summary sucks...] Oneshot of an old memory in Adrian's P.O.V.


**I was bored... I was thinking about how Adrian was rescued from a desert... and I wondered what it was like for him... so here you go.**

**I don't know how it happened for real, or what Mr. Gecko is like, so bare with me.**

**One More Day...**

**By Coco Gash Jirachi**

**Disclaimer: I don't own G/X.**

**Summary: The desert. It can be an enemy, but sometimes an enemy isn't what it seems to be. (Summary sucks...) One-shot of an old memory in Adrian's P.O.V.**

GX - GX

I was always afraid to sleep in the dark of the night. That's when the snakes and scorpions were out the most, searching for unsuspecting prey to bite, poison, and eat-

- Which was me.

During the day, it was too hot, even for sleep. I had the option of burrying myself under sand, but then that could mean that the critters that lay beneath the sand that ate away burried bodies like maggots to a garbage can, could also feast on my flesh.

(Gulp.) (Wide eyes.)

I didn't take that chance...

Now and then, if I was lucky enough, I could use the end of my glasses to poke a hole into a cactus, and slowly, but surely enough, receive the juice from within.

I didn't waste a single drop. No bathing, no splashing it onto my skin. Just one way: down my throat. That's it. And I was satisfied with just that.

Eventually, I gave up trying to sleep. It was useless, pitifull experiance that made me forget the word "rest" quite easily. Once, I did manage to doze off for a full day (God knows how I managed to do so without being eaten), but when my eyes opened, I was face-to-face with a rattle snake.

I had immediatly sprung up, and jumped away from it. As it eyed me, shaking it's tail to make a sound to match it's hisses, I knew at any minute, I would be nothing but a lifeless body out on the sand. Limp, filled with poison, and then no one would know what would have happened to little Adrian...

... Not like they knew I was gone in the first place...

Vultures would pick every last piece of meat from my bone, and sand storms and wind would cover up my body. And if archeologist's ever found my bones, they would think I was from an ancient civilization...

... But I'm not...

I'm Adrian. I don't know my own last name, but I know who I am!

But as I thought that vultures would finish off my life force once poison left me on the brink of death, a vulture did swoop down, but it aimed for the snake. The tallons on it's feet pierced through the snake's head, killing it instantly.

As I eyed the flying creature that flew against the rainbow sunset sky, I then noticed it had dropped something down onto the sand. There, in the grains of light gold, a dead, yet still damp, fish was there. The vulture must have been impatient before, and from a distance away, scooped up a fish that jumped from a river.

Thank you, you God damned bird for eating a venemous reptile instead of my dead body.

I ate that night. For the first time in exactly two weeks, and four days.

Three more days and I'd've been a goner.

You see, I learned when I was younger that there was a rule of three.

You could go three minutes without air.

You could go three hours without shelter.

You could go three days without water.

You could go three weeks without food.

You could go three months without love.

Well, I seemed to be surviving without love in that abandoned, long-forgotten village.

How many months was it now? Four? Five? Six?

Ah hahaha... I defied the final rule of three.

One day went by... then another. Soon a week passed, and then a second.

I had given up on finding anymore food. I laid down on my side day in and day out, mindlessly wondering if I should even attempt to find civilization. But I was completly body dead. My heart was still beating, yet I didn't move. Blankly, without blinking at all, my eyes stared at the azure sky, streching out far as the eye could see, along with the light golden brown of the desert's sand touching the sky when they met at the seam.

It was the sixth day on the third week. I felt my energy draining, my life slipping away. Everything grew dimmer, blurrier.

No.

I had to stay awake.

I wanted to be awake if I died, so I'd know when I did.

Using the little energy I had left, I slowly lifted myself up, and sat.

I was cross-legged, hunched over, now just staring into my lap.

Hours passed.

Soon, when the sun was high enough, and came the most intense heat that I've ever experianced- eh, or is it just me, finally frying into a crisp?- I felt myself growing weary.

I had been away from civilization long enough to not know what occured next clearly.

A sound I heard- yes, a sound. But a sound that wasn't a normal, every day, desert sound.

Focussing the best that I could, I looked over to the side.

A Jeep of some sort was there... I'm saved...

... Eh?... Or is it just a mirage?... Well, I haven't seen one yet... so, there's a high chance that's it.

Realizing it was just my mind, I turned my attention back to my lap.

(Sigh.)

I knew it was too good to be true...

But then, to assure my thoughts, a shadow was cast upon me.

Without so much as a sound, I looked up.

There stood in front of me, a man. A grown, adult man.

He spoke- but I could not understand. It sounded like French...

As I felt dissappointment and started to drift my eyes away, I saw on his belt, a cantine. I had become too weak to etch a hole into a cactus for juice since the last I drank two days before, so it certainly caught my attention.

He seemed to notice, so he removed it from his belt, screwed off the cap, and held it out to me.

Of course, I could barely remember how to drink from it. So, even though he eyed me oddly, I cupped my hands. With a bit of a smile, he poured it into my make-shift cup.

Since I had gotten into the habit of checking to see if water I was about to drink was safe, I brought my hands to my nose without spilling a drop, and sniffed it.

Once I was satisfied, shakily, I brought it to my lips, and slowly drank. It was cold... surprisingly. It soothed my dry, aching throat. As the icy liquid dissappeared from my hands, I made a small content sound.

He asked me something, yet I could not understand him.

When my hands were empty, he held out the cantine for me again. Eagerly, I, in turn, held out my hands. Once they were filled again, the water dissappeared into my mouth again.

He chuckled as he watched me.

"You must be really thirsty, huh?"

I froze, my hands emptied quicker than the time before.

English...

I could understand him!

"Where are your Mom and Dad?" he asked me.

I could have said: "I was abandoned by my Father and my Mother is dead," but I didn't.

I didn't say anything.

"Can you speak, boy?" he asked.

Slowly, I nodded.

Smiling once more, he held out the cantine. I held out my hands, and he filled them again.

"There, good boy!" he said right before I drank once more. "What's your name?"

I downed my water with a bit of a slurp before I answered him.

"Adrian." I told him. My voice was hoarse. I hadn't spoken ever since I was abandoned.

"Adrian, eh?" he asked. "I'm Mr. Gecko. Nice to meet you."

"Gec- ko." I repeated like a child, cocking my to the side slightly.

"Where are your parents?" he asked me again. "What if they're looking for you?"

Peh. I swear on my Mom's grave on this very day that my Dad drank himself to his demise...

"I don't have any." I answered, for the first time having enough water to let tears into my eyes.

"Do you know your last name?" Mr. Gecko asked me.

"Nuh-uh." I answered truthfully, shaking my head. "I'm all alone..."

All the time, my hands were still cupped in my lap. I was half-expecting him to re-fill my hands so I could feel life soak into my body once more, but it never happened. He placed the cantine back onto his belt. I knew it. I was going to be left all alone to die, after all...

"Come with me."

I looked up, and saw that he had walked towards the Jeep.

"Coming, Adrian?" he asked me.

Carefully, I put my legs over the edge of where I sat- the base of a house that had long been destroyed by Father Time. I had a hard time keeping myself up, so leaning one hand on the house remains, I reached with my other hand to Mr. Gecko. When he noticed this, he took my hand, and helped me walk.

When we reached the tan vehicle on black wheels, he opened the back door behind the driver's seat, picked me up, and lifted me in, laying me down on the leather seats.

"Here, Adrian." Mr. Gecko said, handing me his cantine. "All you do is drink the water from the top."

"Thank you, Mr. Gecko." I answered.

As I suckled out the water from the cantine like a baby drank warm milk from the rubber teet of a bottle, Mr. Gecko closed the door, and opened the one beside it. From there, he sat in the driver's seat just in front of him.

"Does it taste good?" he asked me.

I stopped momentarily to give a nod for an answer.

"Well then, you can have what's there. We should get back into town in no time." he told me.

I swallowed the last bit, finding my tummy was filled with the clear liquid. I gave a small burp that sounded like a hiccup.

"Town?" I asked, licking the moisture left on my lips.

"There's a town nearby here." he told me. "It's about twenty miles away. There's no way you'd've survived that far a walk underneath that sun."

Sun... Son...

Soon I found myself laying down onto the back seats a minute after the engine started up, and he turned the Jeep around, heading back into the direction it came from. Finally, after getting only a few seconds of sleep each day, I was able to drift off... and off... and off... into a very, deep sleep, which I so desperatly needed.

When I opened my eyes next, I saw only the blurs of color. Lifting myself up, I felt around for my glasses. When I finally felt them underneath my finger tips, I put them on. They seemed to help me see a bit clearer.

Confused at my surroundings, I looked around. I was in a bedroom, in a soft, warm bed, wearing silk pajamas.

"Huh? Mr. Gecko?" I asked to no one. "Why am I here?"

"Adrian, you're awake, finally."

"Eh heh?" I questioned, looking to see the man who saved me standing in the doorway. "Mr. Gecko!"

"Adrian, how would you like to stay here with me?" he asked me. "And call me 'Daddy?' "

"Dad... dy?" I repeated like a little kid once again. But what was I to do about that? I hadn't spoken in over a year.

In the end, Mr. Gecko and his wife Mrs. Gecko adopted me as their first son.

The very day I answered to him "Yes, Daddy," when he asked me to stay with him, he told me that he wasn't actually going to go out to the desert untill the next day. But something in his heart had told him something was waiting for him.

One more day, and I'd've been a goner.

Because that is the rule of three...


End file.
